The above statement by someone, probably a well-intentioned but simple man, was once dug up somewhere and often quoted by the late Vojin Dimitrijević of bright memories. It shows how well-known and terrible the stigma that the very word "genocide" (killing people) carries with it. International lawyer and specialist in this crime, William Schabas, says that it is "that [terrible] G word" ("the G-word"), and also talks about the omnipresent "mystic of genocide". The G word is relatively new, coined in imitation of already existing ones: "suicide", "patricide" and others. We know when and who first used it: the Polish lawyer Rafael Lemkin, in a private letter in 1942, and the word was first printed in 1944, in his book Axis rule in occupied Europe.
Lemkin invented a new word because no existing word could describe the previously unimaginable crime, the one that the Nazis committed against the Jews. But "genocide" was not a crime in the legal sense for a long time after that, i.e. was not a crime. It became so only in 1951, when the Convention on Genocide, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, entered into force. Until then, no one could be convicted of genocide, no matter what heinous crimes he committed against the members of an ethnic (or other, in the sense of the Convention) group with the intention of destroying it. Likewise, no one who had already committed such a crime before January 12, 1951 could be tried or convicted of genocide. That is why those who carried out, ordered and facilitated the extermination of Jews in Europe during the Second World War were never tried for genocide. If he had survived, Hitler, together with Göring, Hess, Keitel and others, would have been convicted in Nuremberg for crimes against peace and humanity, as well as for war crimes, but not for genocide. Neither Adolf Eichmann was tried for genocide in Jerusalem in 1961 nor Andrija Artuković in Zagreb in 1986.
There were no trials for genocide until the international criminal tribunals of the United Nations were established - the one for the former Yugoslavia (1993) and the one for Rwanda (1994). The first man ever convicted of genocide was Jean-Paul Akayesu, the mayor of Taba, Rwanda, who was sentenced on September 2, 1998, and became final in 2001. And the first person convicted of genocide in the former Yugoslavia, more precisely: in Srebrenica, was Radislav Krstić, general of the Army of the Republika Srpska. After Krstić, Ljubiša Beara (chief of security at the Main Staff of the VRS), Zdravko Tolimir (Beara's assistant), Vujadin Popović (lieutenant colonel of the Drina Corps of the VRS), Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić were convicted of the same genocide. It should be emphasized that no one was convicted of genocide "in Bosnia", that is, in other cities and regions of Bosnia, although Karadžić and Mladić were also accused of that.
The verdict against Krstić, so to speak, constituted the Srebrenica genocide. Until it entered into legal force, it was possible to speculate and debate whether or not there was genocide. For example, one of our lawyers believed that the crime in Srebrenica was not genocide - at least that's how he interpreted the Convention. He remained of that opinion both before and after the first-instance verdict against Krstić (August 2, 2001), until the second-instance panel passed the final verdict on April 19, 2004. But, from that moment on, the question of whether there was genocide was no longer raised: it was settled by a court verdict. No event is genocide because this or that lawyer (or layman) thinks so, but because it was established by a competent court in a prescribed procedure.
The Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia established that genocide was committed in Srebrenica and established the individual responsibility of a number of perpetrators. However, another court - the International Court of Justice, as the highest judicial body of the OUN - confirmed the existence of that genocide. He did this in the proceedings on the lawsuit of Bosnia and Herzegovina against Serbia (then: FRY, then DZ Serbia and Montenegro), in which he had to determine whether Serbia was responsible for: (1) the commission of genocide, (2) complicity in the commission of genocide, (3) failure to prevent genocide and (4) failure to punish perpetrators of genocide. The verdict of February 26, 2007 established that Serbia is not responsible for the execution or complicity, but that it is responsible for not preventing the genocide and not punishing its perpetrators. The court reiterated that the genocide did not take place "in Bosnia" but only in Srebrenica and rejected BiH's request for damages from Serbia.
Finally, Serbia itself, although not by saying but only indirectly, confirmed that genocide was committed in Srebrenica. It did so on March 31, 2010, with the Declaration of the National Assembly, which "strongly" condemned "the crime committed against the Bosniak population in Srebrenica in July 1995, in the manner determined by the judgment of the International Court of Justice". And, as we have seen, the verdict of the International Court of Justice established it genocidal the way that crime was committed and it was declared genocide.
Nevertheless, denial of the genocide prevails in political and, in general, public speech in Serbia. The already mentioned Vojin Dimitrijević called genocide deniers "genocidals". However, a derogatory name for those who ne they deny the genocide but admit that it happened. They are "genocide". This term covers not only the confessors but also the perpetrators of genocide, but - at least when Milorad Dodik uses it - and their immediate and distant descendants, as if acknowledging and/or committing genocide is a hereditary trait: Dodik does not want "my grandchildren to be genocidaires". No punishment is too severe for confessors. Vojislav Šešelj, who says that "for decades he was a prominent abolitionist [opponent of the death penalty]", in 2019 he was ready to support the introduction of the death penalty, but only on the condition that it be prescribed "for all those who declare that in Genocide happened to Srebrenica".
Genocide denial floods the public discourse every now and then, for a variety of reasons. The most recent, ongoing flood was caused by a proposal that the General Assembly of the United Nations adopt a resolution declaring July 11 as the "International Day of Remembrance and Commemoration of the Genocide in Srebrenica". In the proposed text neither Serbs nor Serbia are mentioned as being responsible for the Srebrenica genocide. Announcing Serbia's merciless fight against that proposal, Aleksandar Vučić revealed the strategy that Serbia plans to implement if the resolution is voted.
The announced "strategy" is the epitome of infantilism. Here it is: if the resolution is passed, Serbia will apply for a non-permanent member of the Security Council. When it becomes a non-permanent member, it will strike back at the dark power behind the resolution, which is Germany. (In other words: if we had butter like we don't have flour, we would make good kačamak.) She will strike back by, as a non-permanent member of the SB, every year submitting proposals for resolutions to declare international days of remembrance and commemoration of genocide in Kragujevac, Kraljevo, Jajinci and Jasenovac. And the peak of perfidy of the Serbian strategy is that those resolutions do not mention who is responsible for these "genocides". Lest Vlachs remember: Germans and Croats are responsible!
Vučić is, of course, cynically aware of the childishness and silliness of this "strategy" and invents it solely for the sake of bewitching simplicity. Not only does Serbia not have to be a non-permanent member of the Security Council in order to propose resolutions of the UN General Assembly - every member state can do that, including Serbia today. It is more important that all the "genocides" that Vučić mentions are in fact war crimes from the Second World War and that the Germans and Croats responsible for them have already been convicted and punished as war criminals. Few people in today's world know what happened in Kragujevac and Kraljevo in 1941, or in Jajinci and Jasenovac in 1941-1944. years. But many know what happened in Srebrenica in 1995. And what happened in Srebrenica was genocide, established by the judgments of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice.
Bonus video:
